


Unsystematic

by Hobbitrocious



Series: The Bruschetta Universe (Don't Ask) [3]
Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alien Abduction, BDSM Scene, Belly Kink, Brain Peril, Doctor John, Doctor/Patient, Dom/sub, Dominatrix, Electroconvulsive Therapy, Hospitalization, Lesbian Irene, Light Bondage, M/M, Mad Science, Medical Examination, Medical Experimentation, Medical Inaccuracies, Medical Kink, Medical Objectification, Mild S&M, Moderate Navel Torture, Navel Play, Neurophilia (Brain Fetish), No Sex, Orgasm, PWP, Patient Sherlock, Platonic Female/Male Relationships, Pretend Brain Surgery, Pretend Mind Control, Subspace, Umbiliphilia, Vivisection, group scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-06
Updated: 2015-03-06
Packaged: 2018-03-16 15:40:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3493742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hobbitrocious/pseuds/Hobbitrocious
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John knows Sherlock isn't into sex for the sake of it, or even into his fetishes for the sake of sex.  John wants to give Sherlock pleasure, but isn't sure how because an embarrassed Sherlock has difficulty expressing to John what his most kinky fantasies are. So they agree to have Pro-Domme!Irene wheedle it out of him and then let her arrange an elaborate scene based on Sherlock's intricate, unusual desires. Curious!Faghag!Mary helps out too.<br/>No sex involved, unless, like Holmes, you enjoy this sort of thing enough to consider it a 1:1 substitute.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Letting You Unlock Me

**Author's Note:**

> Sidenote: I've omitted the tag "asexual" because I feel this qualifies more as merely "too-highly-compartmentalised" Holmes. First names used in this fic for ease of mod-verse writing.
> 
> And I haven't seen the BBC series or the other het-based TV series (and don't want to), so this is rather general modernised fic since I already wrote similar things for Ritchieverse and didn't want to be *too* redundant. And there's only so much scifi medfettish stuff you can do with Victorian 'verse, compared to modern, even though I feel the entire premise of the Holmesian universe is lost when modernised.
> 
> Unedited, no beta readers. All errors are mine. The characters are not.  
> Medical inaccuracies abound but on purpose. Frequent repetition of personal kinky trigger words and phrases also on purpose. Sorry if anyone finds it annoying. This also lacks detail that I might have expounded on if I'd had internet access to research with while writing, but I'm leaving it as is. (The fic was written toward the end of a long year and a half of internet withdrawal. *shudders*)
> 
> Sidenote of Lesser Importance: Holeh crud, I've done it. After writing tons of kinky sex-laden fic for the good folk of LiveJournal, fic that I don't much care for myself, I've finally written and completed something I can personally fap to. Took me thirteen years, but I got there. How's that for repression.
> 
> My Holmesian fics "Our Own Greater Good" (completed), "Sinister Kindred" (completed), and "Get Me Outta This Cheap B Movie" (uncompleted) came close, but this story is what those fics wanted to be. Maybe someday I'll even write a better one that isn't just a BDSM scenario within a story but rather a "real" medfettish scifi thingy in which nothing is pretend. Maybe. Like, another thirteen years from now.
> 
> A big thanks goes out to my long-distance Watson, who has been saying for years that I need to write a slashfic that's "for myself". I love you and you inspire me, and I'd be lost without you.
> 
> Sidenote of Utter Ridiculousness: "There's a song that's insiiiiide of my pants // It's a fic that I've tried to write over and over again // I rewrite 'til my balls are so cold..." Right; this has gotten far too silly and I'm stopping there.
> 
> Archiving and Linking: Ask first. Not that I think anyone's gonna want this one.
> 
> Praise and thanks be to Abba YHWH, who allows me to express myself through this writing and in so many other ways!

Personally, Sherlock loathed so-called therapists of the psychiatric sort and had long ago justified to himself his position based on the inherent unethical nature which discredited the field of practice as a whole. As a field strictly of study and observation, of theorising without imposing, to him it was another matter. The professional dominatrix sitting on the couch opposite him, her legs crossed at the knee and her face drolly calm while she took notes on a legal pad balanced in her lap, only served to jangle his nerves all the more for the situation's creepy similarity to a shrink visit. He'd attended far too many of those in his adolescence.

He swallowed around the lump in his throat and reminded himself why he was there.

Irene silently reread what she had written down, ignoring Sherlock for the moment. 

He busied himself with staring out the window to his right, though it didn't afford much of a view. It was a still, gray day; the afternoon sun burned visible low in the sky, but the unbroken gauze of clouds across it coloured the light with a sense of muted chill, of lethargy. As far as the eye could see up or down was a bland, cottony matte of cold blue grays, fading into a tinge of pink toward the horizon line. At the furthest reaches of the confined vista was a dense line of bare trees, with occasional freeway lamps rising twice their height among them like sentinel spears. Not a person was in sight, no satisfactory distraction. He couldn't even see the road past the woods, much less the cars speeding along it. The view offered nothing. It was motionless.

There was no exterior noise near enough to discern, either. Irene's pen dancing on the paper and the scratch of her nylons against her businesslike skirt and the upholstery were all to fill the void.

Despite the central heating in the house, Sherlock squirmed into the back of the other sofa and shivered in his coat.

He heard Irene inhale as though about to speak and returned to the room.

"Now," Irene said enticingly, recapturing his wandering gaze with her own, "Tell me what you've wanted for so long. Tell me everything you couldn't tell John."

Like a fly before the spider he sat, pinned, palms sweaty on his knees, and began to tell all.

* * *

When John conferred with Irene, some days after Sherlock's visit, in a way he wasn't surprised to learn that Sherlock's most arousing desires had absolutely nothing to do with the conventional idea of sex. 

It took a while after pursuing their relationship together, but by now John realised that, even at Sherlock's most touchy-feely and affectionate, the passion behind his kisses and embraces was strangely platonic. The detective was simply, and quite heartbreakingly, starved for affection. Sherlock's lack of normal sexual response to the standard romantic overtures, in addition, left John at something of a loss when it came to figuring out what did arouse him. He could get Sherlock a little excited by tying him up, and he knew all the places Sherlock preferred to be touched, but his lover hadn't been able to find the voice to tell John what could really get him going. It was obvious that he wasn't comfortable enough with touch alone to glean as much pleasure from it as John did.

Sherlock seemed scared, if John thought about it. Most likely afraid of giving anyone, even his ever trustworthy Boswell, the ability to make him completely lose control. In their entire history of intimacy, John had yet to see Sherlock have an orgasm that was anything but reluctant and, dare the doctor say, mechanical. Sometimes Sherlock would even insist that he was done for the night without having come at all, instead having wearied himself trying.

He was full of idiosyncrasies. For all Sherlock frowned upon superfluous talk when he was not in the mood for it, John discovered early on that the detective was a natural when it came to talking dirty. Sherlock also hated going to see a doctor, generally speaking, and yet...

Irene confirmed another suspicion of John's, that Sherlock's reluctance to discuss the matter had, in part, to do with the fear that John would take the revelation of Sherlock's nature to mean Sherlock would rather not continue to have regular sex with him. Indeed, Sherlock beseeched Irene to make sure John knew that what they were doing until now was fine; that Sherlock wanted to keep giving John what John wanted.

John and Irene were here today to figure out how John could reciprocate, using the knowledge Irene now had. The impersonality of using her as a go-between, it seemed, had been what Sherlock required to un-clam.

As Irene exhausted her notes, observations, and suggestions, the two of them discussed what they might do to pull it all together into a form that would hopefully give Sherlock satisfaction.

(Author's Note: 'Simon the Sorcerer' fans, put down your picket signs. Mind the Woodworm, though.)

"I've got a close friend who might be willing to help us out," John mentioned when Irene lamented that they could use another set of hands, and another role to give the scene they were planning more depth. With Sherlock, of course, the more detail they could pack into the experience, the better.

"Really?" Irene's eyes glinted. "As long as it's not anyone you think Sherlock would find threatening, that opens up all kinds of possibilities."

John shrugged. "We met each other back when I was dabbling in the 'scene', before Sherlock," he explained. "Sherlock's met her, she's sort of a fan of his now. I don't think her being there in sort of a peripheral manner would bother him."

"Perfect," Irene muttered, scribbling something in the margin of her paper. "Let me know. In the meantime, I'll play around with what we can do with her. I'm thinking she can take my part in what we have down, and I can set up kind of a second act with another role for myself."

John laughed, "A bit like writing a play, isn't it?"

Irene hummed in agreement. "Sherlock is a bit of a drama queen, after all, isn't he."

"Or just a queen," John coughed, unable to help himself.

Irene snickered. "Only the best for our little Sherlock," she quipped, still writing.

John gave pause at that, then asked hesitantly, "Did... did he tell you about all that?"

Irene looked up from the legal pad.

"The... 'little' stuff?" John clarified ambiguously.

It took a moment before it clicked and Irene gave a small gasp; her mouth formed a delighted O and her eyes lit up. 

"You mean, like, baby?" she asked, already confident of the answer. That was too ridiculously perfect, she thought. Even made more sense with Sherlock than with some of the others she'd met.

John's expression confirmed it. "Yeah; baby," he said with a slight wince. 

"Don't worry, I won't breathe a word," Irene promised with one hand solemnly raised. "That's too precious, though. Baby Sherlock. Oh my goodness, I'll bet he's glad I didn't know about that when we first met."

"Mhm," John agreed, and silently basked in the knowledge that there were still some things which Sherlock confided only to him.

* * *

Midmorning saw Sherlock walking up a gravel path to an out of the way building on the opposite side of town. The grass in front was short but not tended all that regularly. Mostly it was strangled from cars rolling over it to park. 

The place was brick, nondescript, with lifeless, dirty windows in a size and style befitting a stereotypical office building many decades old. Probably got draughty this time of year.

There were two cars on the lawn, well inside the perimeter of the chain link fence. If not for them, he might have gone back to the road to double-check he had the right address. The engine of one of them made a tinny settling noise, still cooling down. They'd only been parked for a couple hours at most. He continued past, up the path to the front step.

He tried the heavy door and found it unlocked. 

The main hall was dim. There was an elevator to his right, locked off with a rolling accordion grate. There were only two storeys; it was possible the upper was out of use. Or perhaps had been converted to storage.

A light coming from under a door on the left, further along, spurred him on.

It was a small, bright waiting room, pale yellow clashing with ugly neutral carpet that put his senses on edge. The lighting was fluorescent; the only window to the outside was behind the window into the receptionist's booth.

Mary sat at the window desk. She looked pleased to see him.

"Mr. Holmes?" she greeted him, not waiting for him to answer. "We've been expecting you. Have a seat, and I'll let Dr. Watson know you're here."

She disappeared behind the wall.

Sherlock wandered about the cramped space for a bit before settling into one of the uncomfortable plastiform chairs. He was grateful Mary had skipped over pretending to make pleasantries. None of them were here for small talk.

He startled when the door to the inner room opened.

John stepped out, clipboard in hand. He wore a white medical coat with his trusty stethoscope slung over his neck. He read the top of the sheet, then peered at Sherlock. "Holmes?" he said.

Sherlock sat straighter. "Yes."

John nodded to him. "Follow me."

Sherlock did, butterflies starting to kick around in his stomach as he passed through the door.

John led him to an examination room and motioned for him to hop up on the table, asking him to undress. He turned toward the cabinets, setting the clipboard on the countertop and busying himself with marking things off to give Sherlock privacy.

Sherlock stripped completely, setting his clothes on the corner chair, and sat on the exam bed. The swath of tissue paper crinkled under Sherlock's bum. He felt far more exposed than he usually did around John.

Rather than give Sherlock a hospital gown, John took a white linen cloth from one of the drawers and draped it across Sherlock's groin. Sherlock let him without a word.

"So," John said and leaned back on the cabinets, "your last doctor referred you here because of a puzzling and unusual combination of symptoms."

He picked up the chart and read off, "Headaches, distension of the abdomen from an unknown cause, sleep disturbances, and some possible memory loss confined to a short timeframe. Is that correct?"

It was the first time Sherlock had heard any of it, of course. But he was quick to nod his agreement and offered, "Did the doctor mention to you what he thought it might mean?"

John gave him a terse smile. "If he knew what was wrong with you, he wouldn't have sent you to me. Hmm. Looking at his notes again, it seems you've also been experiencing some soreness inside your navel?"

Sherlock cringed and blushed. "Um, yes... it's been very sore."

"Started around the same time as the bloating?"

"Yes."

John hummed and said, "I'd better have a look at it. But all in good time. I'm going to examine you first. Standard examination, nothing to worry about. Here; let's start with your throat. Say 'ah'."

He grabbed a tongue depressor from a jar on the counter and laid it on Sherlock's tongue. Knowing how Sherlock hated the real thing, prone to gagging as he was, John didn't poke it very far inside.

"Ahhh," Sherlock gurgled.

"Good," John praised.

John went about the typical mundane stuff, checking Sherlock's eyes, ears, glands, and blood pressure while Sherlock sat with a thermometer sticking out of his mouth. John pretended not to notice every time Sherlock tried not to arch into his touch.

After the thermometer came out, John had Sherlock lie on his back. He adjusted the sheet between his legs for him, then readied for the more intensive half of the exam.

 

The bell of the stethoscope was terribly frigid, yet Sherlock remained obediently still while John pressed it to various spots on his tender bare skin.

John started by listening to Sherlock's lungs and heart. The first divulged a bit of a wheeze John was surprised to pick up on, never having registered it with only his ears, but concluded was only natural, taking into account Sherlock's smoking habit; the latter, by the time John reached it, pounded strongly and a little too quickly to not betray the approximate nature of Sherlock's thoughts behind his painstaking composure.

Masking a knowing smile, John slid the end of the stethoscope downward and began to examine Sherlock's abdomen.

Sherlock, at first, held his breath. At a concerned look from John, he then deliberately fixed his eyes on the pockmarked ceiling tiles and focussed on taking even, measured breaths. Sherlock made especially sure to breathe from the diaphragm as fully as possible, though John noted he was still tense - but John certainly forgave Sherlock that much, knowing what it did to the man to be under the microscope like this, so to speak.

The sound of Sherlock's lungs dominated the upper abdomen, so John moved gradually further down. He caught the faint, whooshing thrum of Sherlock's pulse right around his navel. John held the steely bell there for far longer than medically necessary and was rewarded with hearing a quickening to Sherlock's heartbeat.

Moving on to Sherlock's underbelly proved most interesting for John and observably embarrassing and subsequently arousing for Sherlock. Moments after pressing to listen to that area, John heard the unmistakable gurgle of the meal he'd forced on the detective the day before rushing through the intestinal tract.

Subsequent rumblings from Sherlock's gut were so ridiculously loud that John was sure he could have heard them clearly without using his stethoscope at all. In fact, that happened an awful lot at home when Sherlock ate on a days-empty stomach. For as often as he heard it, John had a hard time not laughing when the noises started at the wrong times, like in the middle of a TV documentary explaining how it was possible to discern the last meal of a thousand-year-old mummified mountain man, or cutting through the silence while he was reading a book across the room (or in a different room altogether). It was even more distracting during sex.

This time, though, he kept a straight face. Mostly.

John could almost have sworn that Sherlock's belly grew a hint more swollen over the next few minutes, the fibrous components of the bread, engorged with water and tea, sitting heavily inside Sherlock's normally empty tummy. John continued to listen until the noises died out.

Satisfied, John removed the earpieces and rested one hand on Sherlock's stomach, casually squeezing here and feeling there. He watched with hidden glee as Sherlock's blush deepened and the carefully controlled inhales Sherlock had provided under John's stethoscope gave way to irregular, belly-heaving gasps.

John's hand inched teasingly near to Sherlock's navel, not quite touching it. The twitching beneath the sheet across Sherlock's groin petered off somewhat as he grew frustrated with John's procrastination. Despite the desperate look in his eyes, Sherlock remained obediently silent. Keeping his mouth shut, on the other hand, he could not do to the letter. His arousal demanded extra oxygen. John was tempted to don the stethoscope again to listen to those breaths as they became more ragged.

Instead, he trained his eye on Sherlock's middle, Sherlock trying to follow his line of sight.

After a few more agonisingly slow abdominal palpations, John drew away and reached for something in the cabinets across from the exam bed. 

Sherlock jumped at the snap of John's latex sterile gloves going on. The next he knew, John's gloved fingers were tentatively stretching open his bellybutton, the doctor squinting and trying to peer inside. 

After making a show of scrutinising it, John sunk an index finger as far as it would go into the round little hole in Sherlock's belly.

Sherlock reacted instantly with a full-body spasm and a moan. He bit his lip then and watched John's movements with rapt attention.

Finger still deep inside, John used his other hand to prod again around Sherlock's bloated stomach.

Worry washed over John's face; he pulled his finger from Sherlock quick and hard, the vacuum-like suction making it hurt Sherlock wonderfully (but not enough), and donned the stethoscope quickly for one final, hurried listen. He placed the chestpiece directly on Sherlock's bellybutton and held it there.

Effecting his best take-charge voice, John informed Sherlock, "it's worse than I thought. I'll have to operate. Hold on," and with that he stood, bundled Sherlock into his arms, sheet and all, and spirited him away to the adjoining room.

Mary was waiting for them, pristine white scrubs, surgical apron, disposable gloves, cap, and sterile mask already on.

"How is the patient, doctor?" she asked as John deposited Sherlock on a padded table in the middle of the room and flicked on a bright overhead surgical lamp.

"Stable," he responded matter-of-factly, "but we have to perform surgery right away. Something's not right. I want to run a few more diagnostic procedures on him, and then we're opening him up."

Mary nodded.

Sherlock squirmed on the table, grimacing under the harsh light. John splayed a hand on his stomach to still him, little good he knew it would do. Mary straightened the strip of sheeting over Sherlock's crotch and wheeled an instrument tray over to the operating table. The contents of the tray remained ominously beyond Sherlock's view.

"I'll need to administer an injection," John said, preparing something at the instrument tray. "Nurse, please restrain the patient."

Mary wasted no time in binding Sherlock by way of heavy, padded leather straps slung across his shoulders and hips, and similar cuffs cinched tightly around his wrists and ankles, all secured by institutional-grade buckles. Sherlock flexed and bucked a few times to test their hold, and John eyed him with increasing worry.

"We'll start with a sedative," John told Mary, talking over Sherlock. The syringe he held up was no more than a cheap novelty pen with graduated markings and a filling of red dye swimming about, but it was perfectly serviceable to the fantasy. 

Sherlock's eyes went wide, anticipation building as John wielded it. John gave Mary more instructions, drawing out the time before he so much as turned to face Sherlock with the injection. Sherlock only half-heard the commotion.

"... It may have affected his brain. The neurosurgeon should be arriving soon to assist us, but until she comes we're on our own. Prepare the probe lead and have it on standby."

Mary deftly assembled something on a second cart and wheeled that to Sherlock's other side. A computer monitor on the top was tilted away from him. She then ripped open a packet containing a small square of alcohol-soaked cotton pad, which she wrapped around her finger and roughly shoved into Sherlock's navel, twisting and rubbing to ensure she disinfected his skin thoroughly.

Then John, bracing one hand on the apex of Sherlock's swollen gut, nudged the syringe into Sherlock's belly hole.

"Administering injection," Dr. Watson announced. 

There was a loud click, and the nib of the ballpoint pen shot out and lodged itself in one of the shallow folds at the bottom of Sherlock's navel. Sherlock pursed his lips and made a choked noise.

"Injection successful," John concluded, withdrawing the syringe.

Mary shoved the disinfectant pad into him again, and withdrew just as roughly as before. Despite the restraints, Sherlock bucked sharply enough to make the entire table quake.

Mary spoke up, "Permission to start an EEG, doctor? The neurosurgeon may want the telemetry when she comes in."

John nodded, then headed to a corner of the room to shrug on a smock and locate himself a surgical mask and cap. "Agreed," he said. "Let's get some wires on that tricky brain of his. Concentrate the leads on his prefrontal cortex; that's likely what we'll be operating on after we locate the corresponding anomaly in his stomach."

Mary proceeded to untangle the mess of wires trailing from the machinery below the monitor screen. That done, she applied them one by one to Sherlock's scalp and forehead, fussing with his thick curls as they got in her way, the tiny electrodes at the ends sticking to his skull like a host of dendrites from a thirsty parasite. She powered up the monitor, fiddled with a keyboard for a bit, and finally turned the display so John could see it. Sherlock was able to catch a glimpse too, skewed as it was. The apparatus beeped subduedly at long intervals, and a series of sine waves rolled across the screen next to a cross-section still of what was meant to be Sherlock's brain, of which key portions were highlighted.

"Brainwaves erratic," John observed. "Well, even if they're abnormal, they're regular enough. We should be able to stabilise him until Dr. Adler arrives. If he gets much worse, I'll have you apply electrotherapy while I make an emergency call to Neurosurgery."

"Yes, doctor."

Eyes still tracking Sherlock's brainwave read-out with concern, John ordered, "Let's prepare him. Umbilical stretcher."

"Umbilical stretcher," Mary repeated, handing John a thickset stainless steel rod. It was of a fair length, as long as John's forearm, and the circumference of a small common battery or, maybe, a thumb.

John slid it into Sherlock's navel dry, twisting it and changing angle to achieve the tightest fit as he pushed in. When it could obviously snug in no further, John held it in place, the rod sticking out of Sherlock vertically. 

True to the name given the instrument, Sherlock did indeed feel his skin trying to stretch around it.

"Nurse," John summoned.

Mary dutifully took hold of the umbilical stretcher and held it steady while John retrieved his stethoscope and examined Sherlock again.

Sherlock lifted his head to watch, the electrode leads rustling softly against the white sheet beneath him.

John's gaze caught the monitor screen and he whipped off the stethoscope, transfixed. 

"He's got some excessive activity going on in the left side of the prefrontal lobe."

Mary repositioned her hand around the rod, jarring it inside Sherlock.

"Shall I prepare the ECT unit, doctor?" she asked.

John watched the screen for a few moments more.

"No," he said, "Electroconvulsive shock at this stage may render his neurosurgery unsuccessful before it even begins. We won't electrocute the patient unless we absolutely must."

Sherlock wriggled beneath them, breathing hard.

"Doctor!" Mary cried.

"That sedative's not doing its work," John gritted as he hastily fumbled for something on a nearby tray. "Remove the umbilical stretcher, but keep it at the ready," he told Mary.

She lifted it out, tugging against the suction when Sherlock's bellybutton started to turn inside-out around it, reluctant to let go. It popped free loudly. The rim of Sherlock's navel was an abused-looking red.

No sooner had Mary removed the rod, John applied the slender end of a thermometer in its wake. The thermometer tip was blunt, but felt more pointed after the wide, flat end of the stretcher before it. John held it inside Sherlock until it beeped three times in quick succession. Whisking it out, John tutted and recorded Sherlock's umbilical temperature on a chart hanging on a clipboard at the end of the operating table.

"Apply the umbilical stretcher one more time, nurse. I have to make a quick call. Thank you."

He and Mary nodded to each other, and John left the room with the patient chart. Then Mary, studiously ignoring Sherlock's glazed stare and heaving belly, worked the rod back inside him and silently held it there. She occasionally rubbed his belly above or below the stretcher and checked his status via the neural monitor.

After what seemed an age, John flew back into the room, jotted some haphazard notes on Sherlock's chart, and hung it back in place.

"Thank you, nurse. You may remove the instrument, and we'll hook the patient up to the umbilical monitor."

"Yes, doctor," Mary answered. She drew the stretcher out the same way she had the first time, fighting against Sherlock's body to free the instrument until the suction relented with an audible pop.

Sherlock contemplated the hot, expanded, pried-open feeling in his middle as he listened to Mary make adjustments to the equipment on her cart and watched John sort through and pore over prepared diagrams depicting Sherlock's intestines, dual angles of Sherlock's skull, and proposed entry points for needle electrodes into Sherlock's brain. The diagrams came from an arrangement on the wall interspersed with developed x-rays.

When both were done, John had Mary keep a close eye on the screen while he took hold of the probe she had earlier prepared. It was a small, round metal plug, rather like something one might insert into one of the infinite little ports found in the confounding rear face of a computer, and a long, coated wire ran to the same system as Sherlock's electroencephalogram leads were plugged into. John eased the short probe into Sherlock's well-stretched bellybutton, where he pressed the tip here and there while observing Sherlock's reactions.

John prodded only gently for a while, then beckoned Mary. 

"Nurse? I could use some help determining a point of previous entry."

Mary quickly selected a long, thin instrument and pointed it confidently at Sherlock's belly. Not as confidently, she inquired, "Previous entry? Has the patient undergone such a procedure before, doctor?"

John grit his teeth and huffed as though steeling himself. "No, not a proper medical procedure. I was just on the phone with one of Dr. Adler's associates. This one's a possible abduction case. Adler and her research team are very interested in examining him. If her theory is correct, he may have undergone an implantation procedure. Her team has seen few like it, but she suspects he might show marks of invasive instruments having entered the abdominal region. I think I may have found one here in the umbilicus."

Understanding, Mary repositioned the surgical lamp overhead and used her sturdy steel wand to investigate the depths of Sherlock's navel. 

Meanwhile, John set the probe down on Sherlock's stomach and picked up a small pair of forceps to aid Mary with.

They poked and pulled at his middle for some time, eventually concurring that a small scar inside the navel, to which Sherlock reacted strongly when forcibly prodded, may have indeed been recently opened using some unknown instrument.

To verify their findings John handed the forcep handle over to Mary, who used it to pull at one side of the rim of Sherlock's navel, while the doctor fetched an otoscope, fitted it with a speculum, and nudged it into Sherlock's middle for a closer look. 

Sherlock felt it move around inside him, then stop on one spot. After a good, long minute of scrutiny, John withdrew it.

"Sherlock," John addressed him even as he set up to resume insertion of the wire-bound probe, "listen to me. Do you have any memory of encountering alien life forms?"

"I... no," Sherlock panted.

Mary indicated the lead in John's grasp and interrupted, hushed but urgent, "Shouldn't we anesthetise the patient first, doctor?"

"Neurosurgery was clear: Dr. Adler needs him conscious for the operation. She's on her way now." 

John and Mary both cast an appraising look to Sherlock's brainwaves tracing across the screen.

John spread Sherlock's bellybutton with one gloved hand, and with the other guided the umbilical probe to the spot Mary had indicated. "Sherlock..."he pressed, eyes on his task, "have you experienced any strange thoughts or dreams lately, possibly involving aliens? Has anyone else performed experiments on you, or implanted things into your body?"

Sherlock was the picture of helpless amnesia, struggling to recall any such event and panicking when he failed. "...I don't know?"

"Do you recall anything being inserted into your umbilical passage or procedures carried out on your brain?"

Sherlock's eyes glazed over again. He gasped, "no."

To Mary, John commented, "Sounds like he was unconscious when the incident occurred. If Dr. Adler's right, he may already have a parasitic growth tapping into his brainstem. In later stages, her team found some of their subjects suffering from a full-brain assimilation by the implant. It quickly leads to brain death. If she gets here in time, the hope is we can isolate the affected area before his condition advances like the others."

"But to what end?" Mary fretted.

"If we can retain some control over the patient's mind, we may be able to study the thing long enough to learn how to communicate with it. If nothing else, Adler can study the effects of long-term host bonding if he survives. What I'm about to say next is classified information, you understand. We're obligated now to work with Dr. Adler's department on this case."

"I understand, doctor."

"The implant inside of him is organic. It's alive, possibly sentient. If his abduction followed suit with the ones before him, he was impregnated with it via the healed opening you saw in his navel. He would have been barely conscious immediately following the impregnation for up to two days after, at which point the embryonic creature typically hatches just inside the umbilicus and would have started making headway by whatever means available toward his spinal column. From there, it's a straight shot through the base of the subject's skull and into the brain. The hatchling, if it followed the pattern of the previous cases, was probably starved by the time it entered the skull and latched onto the patient's brainstem rather than venturing further. As long as we can keep it from burrowing into his corpus callosum and rupturing the structure of the entire brain itself, it should be able to sustain itself on his basic neural impulses and cerebral-spinal fluid."

"I see. Is its reaction to ECT known?" Mary peered warily at Sherlock's supine form sidelong.

"Not entirely." John warned. "It may stun the creature. Or, if the dose is miscalculated, it might enrage it and provoke it to burrow into the brain. That's why I'll not authorise it unless it's an emergency. If we lose the patient, we lose the embryo. And he won't be of any use to Adler then except for an autopsy."

John steadied his hands and poised himself to attempt the probe one final time.

"Keep an eye on his brainstem activity while I insert the probe, would you, nurse?"

John found the spot again, and this time dug the tip of the probe in as far as he could with utmost precision. Sherlock writhed in mindless sensation, almost upsetting John's work. As things were, the straps held him well enough that John needed only to place a firm gloved hand on Sherlock's upper abdomen. With his other he was able to sustain enough pressure on the probe that, after much trying, it very slowly slid into Sherlock, squelching as it opened a tiny channel leading through the core of the detective's innards.

The wire embedded in Sherlock, John tested the connection of the probe by having Mary switch the input to the monitor screen. The neural scans and EEG were relegated to a smaller portion of the screen, half of it replaced by fluctuating rhythms of low-key brainwaves and Sherlock's pulse as it passed through the large artery in his abdomen.

"Marvellous," Mary whispered, still impressively in-character.

"Mm," John agreed. He explained, talking half to himself, "The bundle of nerves directly below the entry point is what sends out those signals. In the recovered subjects who weren't implanted, this 'belly brain' was found harvested from them. This may have been the initial target of the hatchling, but it obviously sensed a bigger nerve centre nearby."

Once Sherlock came back to himself, he lifted his head and stared dumbly at the wire lead trailing out of his bellybutton.

Mary noticed and readjusted the surgical lamp again, taking care that the light still fell where it was needed. When Sherlock dropped his head he squinted upward, expecting to be half-blinded, but Mary had positioned the lamp such that the glare was no longer hitting his eyes. 

Sherlock breathed a little faster. He hadn't been able to see the mirror affixed to the ceiling before.

He stared into it and was able to watch everything as though from a bird's eye view.

John and Mary exchanged a knowing grin.

Self-indulgently, John took another quick listen with his stethoscope. Sherlock was definitely excited. Maybe too excited, in fact. If they wanted to get him through the entire scenario to the end before he wore himself out, they would have to give him a breather. 

Luckily, Irene had built one into the plan.

"Nurse," John asked, after setting the stethoscope aside and taking Sherlock's pulse with his fingers, "did you give me the probe equipped with an impregnation tubule, or will we need to switch it out for one?"

"No, doctor, the one inside the patient already has it."

"Brilliant. Good work," John thanked her.

Mary took that as her cue to do some key-tapping at one of the control boards on the machinery. "Flushing out the tubule now," she announced. "We're ready to administer medication through it whenever you need."

"Good. We're going to sedate him - properly, this time - and set up for surgery. If he doesn't come around on his own by the time Adler arrives, we'll bring him out of it."

John plucked a vial from a small cabinet along the wall and handed it to Mary, who inverted it and snapped it into place within the apparatus connected to Sherlock.

Mary fiddled with more switches and buttons. Sherlock's intrigued mind tried to figure out what each one did, his eyes darting between the crash cart and the mirror as she worked.

"Do you intend to give him the entire dose in one go?" Mary asked, her anxious tone implying that such a dose was unusually large.

John fixed her with a steely look, brooking no argument. "I think that would be wise. We want to forestall any unexpected activity from his implant before we've got him open. We'll just have to hope the sedative is as effective on the embryo as it is on the patient."

Mary continued to set up the sequence, then looked to the doctor.

"Go ahead," he directed, and moved to stand at the head of the operating table.

Mary tapped another series of keys. "Administering sedative through umbilical tubule," she reported.

Sherlock's eyes went wide when he saw a thick, padded blindfold looming over him. It draped gently across his temples, then it was gently snugged into place and secured. He felt a minute jerk on the probe in his navel as he heard Mary say, 

"Injection complete. His brainwaves are steady. That should hold him until we're ready."

"Any spikes from the brainstem or lower brain within the past five minutes?" Dr. Watson checked.

"None."

"Good. Let's get to work."

From there, it was all sounds of things being moved in various parts of the room, of metal on metal, of sheeting both cloth and plastic being shaken out. Sherlock's hearing sharpened in the darkness behind the blindfold. He stayed as still as possible and simply listened, appearing as close to unconscious as he could manage and wondering what else would unfold.

The other two took their time getting things ready. John startled Sherlock at the end of it by pressing the cold end of the stethoscope to Sherlock's belly again. It moved here and there, examining all quarters of Sherlock's abdomen with slow thoroughness. Sherlock made an effort to breathe deep and slow now that he had calmed considerably.

He felt John step away and suppressed the urge to turn his head to follow the footsteps.

Someone left the room for a minute and came back. Finally, two sets of footsteps approached the table and stopped there.

John spoke first. "Let's give him a small burst of current from the probe, test his reaction."

A switch tapped. Sherlock heard a quick, faint electrical buzz and the probe pushed down harder into his navel for an instant. He stifled a gasp.

"Nothing happened," John observed. "Nurse, please increase the voltage by half."

This time, when Sherlock heard the stronger electrical noise, he arched his body upward as the probe was forced down into him, then fell limp again, looking very much as though he'd been galvanised for that instant. The jab to his abused navel left him twitching and panting, the feel of the probe within him amplified with each breath that heaved through his belly.

"Very good," John said as if to Sherlock.

There was more movement on either side of him, more preparations ostensibly being made while he regained control of himself again. The door opened and shut, twice.

Mary spoke from the direction of the door. "The neurosurgeon's arrived. She's suiting up now."

Sherlock's lower back clenched. Up to now, he wasn't really sure Irene would show or if mention of her was just for the benefit of elaborating out the fantasy and leading his imagination on.

"Not a moment too soon," John quipped, the strain in his voice suggesting he was concentrating on something else. It took Sherlock a bit to place the sounds of John struggling to get a pair of fresh gloves out of an overstuffed box before he heard John peel the old ones off and replace them. Mary did the same after.

John's voice came from above Sherlock's head next. 

"Time to open him up. We can test his consciousness afterward and then bring him 'round with some direct stimulation if need be. Let's try to have him ready by the time Adler gets in here." 

Sherlock shivered at the idea of an electrode applied directly to his brain and thought of the sensation he'd gotten when he'd been "shocked" through the umbilical probe.

That train of thought was interrupted by the riveting metallic noise of something long and sharp dragging across the edge of an instrument tray as it was picked up.

John placed the fingers of one hand on Sherlock's skull. There was a bit of kneading and feeling around.

Mary stepped in alongside and glided something with a cold, flat end across Sherlock's head. It felt as though she was searching for something. A small beeping came from one side of the table, and she held the instrument in place.

"Resonance from the patient's brainwave irregularities is strongest here," she said. "Working in this spot should have the most effect on the implant without reaching all the way through his brain."

"Good," John replied. "I want to keep as much of his brain intact as we can. I'm sure Dr. Adler feels the same."

A few of the EEG sensors were removed and left to dangle off the operating table. Sherlock felt his hair parted and a thin, blunt edge pressed to the spot after Mary withdrew her instrument.

It was John who held the new device. "Keep an eye on his vitals," he said. "Here we go."

The doctor started up an even, sawing motion against Sherlock's scalp that went on for some tense minutes, travelling gradually across his head. That finished, there was movement Sherlock only heard, and then he felt something being carefully placed and clipped securely into his hair. It was clipped tight and close, and almost hurt.

John hummed thoughtfully, then said, "Things look normal on the surface, at least. No tendrils or foreign veins have infiltrated to this area that I can see yet."

Sherlock dipped into his imagination and tried to picture John scrutinising his exposed brain.

Mary spoke next. "He's still unconscious, doctor."

"... Here."

It sounded like the medicine vial unsnapping from the machinery and a new one being inserted in its place.

There was a vibration somewhere along the cord leading into Sherlock's bellybutton. One of the machines on Mary's side beeped.

"The sedative has already cycled through him, but it appears to have concentrated inside the implant. It's either leaching back into his brainstem from the implant, or the implant is feeding him sleep patterns to keep their states locked."

A weighty huff from John. "Alright. I'm going in with needle electrodes. We'll just have to jumpstart his brain and hope the implant doesn't spook." 

Sherlock heard John hold his breath as he made two slow, deft movements with something on Sherlock's head. Each ended with a barely audible tap against something hard that felt like it was flush with Sherlock's scalp. 

"There. The electrodes are in place. Set the voltage and standby... Clear."

Sherlock was ready this time when he heard the rushing sound of the electrostimulator, and convulsed on cue.

The thick blindfold was lifted off his face. Sherlock blinked rapidly, trying to take in everything around him before his eyes could even adjust. When he stopped seeing dancing spots, he was simultaneously excited and a little disappointed to find there was a sheet suspended on hooks above him, blocking the mirror's view of his head above his eyebrows. He watched in the mirror as Mary attached electrocardiogram leads across his chest and plugged them into another slot in the machines. A soft beep began to repeat at intervals with steady silences in between.

John's fingertips brushed Sherlock's before he realised John had stepped into view.

"There we are," John murmured as he gazed down at Sherlock. He flicked a pen light on and shone it into each of Sherlock's eyes, checking their reactive state, and asked, "Can you feel that?"

Sherlock wiggled his fingers against John's, and John's stilled. 

"Yes, doctor," Sherlock croaked, mouth dry and a touch hoarse.

"Hm." John gave a decisive nod and pocketed the pen light. "How many fingers?"

"Four," Sherlock answered, sounding less sure of himself than usual.

"Very good," John said patronisingly, then took another of his long listens to Sherlock's insides with his stethoscope. 

Sherlock turned his eyes to the mirror and watched.

Mary had gone to the door while Sherlock was distracted. He heard her open it and call, "We're ready for you, doctor."

Sherlock kept his head still, unsure whether craning his neck to get a peek at Irene was a good idea. Her heels clicked up to the head of the table, a little outside of his view due to the sheet. It seemed she had no intention of moving into his line of sight for now.

"Hello, Dr. Adler," John acknowledged as she approached.

"Dr. Watson," Irene returned.

Mary took her place in front of the monitors to Sherlock's left and informed the room, "Brainwaves still stable."

The electrocardiogram continued to beep.

John joined Irene at Sherlock's head, telling her, "The patient is lucid and responsive enough, if you think we should start. We've opened him up where you prescribed. No movement from the implant the whole time we've had him, but he did have something interesting going on in his prefrontal lobe before we sedated him. Our equipment here wasn't able to trace whether the anomaly was induced or independent of the implant."

"I'll run through his entire brainwave readout back in my laboratory when we're through," Irene assured. "It might match up with anomalies in the previous hosts."

The snap of sterile gloves, and then Irene's fingers were prodding at Sherlock's head.

"How did the implant react to sedation?" Irene asked.

Mary informed her of their findings, stating the implant was still retaining a small amount of the drug. It seemed to be recovering from it, she said, albeit much more slowly than Sherlock had.

"Doctor?" Irene peered at John and said, "Let's begin the operation."

Together, John and Irene lifted away the sheet that had been suspended on the hooks.

Sherlock's breath caught.

In the mirror, Sherlock saw a patch of exposed brain that appeared to be bulging as though through a sizeable opening in his skull. Two parallel metal rods stuck out of his brain matter, a thick, coiled wire trailing from each leading into the set of machines controlled by Mary.

"Vitals elevated slightly. We've got a blip in his prefrontal lobe again," Mary warned.

Irene made an amused sound. "Mark the timestamp, nurse, and please do the same if you see it again."

Mary nodded and tapped at the keyboard. "Yes, doctor."

"Now," Irene said, her tone getting down to business, "to determine whether his implant is the real thing. I'm going to reposition one of your electroprobes, Dr. Watson. The other is already in a good location."

Sherlock saw her carefully draw one of the rods out from his 'brain', then slide it slowly between the folds of tissue in a nearby spot. The coiled lead bounced and tugged minutely.

"Nurse, if we could have a ten millisecond burst of current at the last set dosage?"

"Electrodes prepped. On your mark, Dr. Adler."

"Now."

Sherlock jerked on the table, hearing and watching himself be electrocuted.

It looked real enough that, when it was over, John felt the need to place a reassuring hand on Sherlock's shoulder and give him a squeeze.

Irene kept her focus. "Any response from the target area?" she asked Mary.

"Nothing yet... No, wait... an electrical echo near the brainstem. Adjacent to it, not originating from the patient. It may be what you're looking for."

"Getting close," Irene muttered. "His symptoms are similar to the others."

Mary's cart beeped at her. 

"The umbilical probe has detected an identical signal. It's being sent in both directions - up, into his brain, and down his spinal column."

"That's precisely what we're looking for," Irene crowed. "Positive diagnosis is impregnation with neuro-parasitic alien hatchling."

John looked from the wet mass of Sherlock's skewered brain to Irene and asked, "What happens now?"

"In theory we have a few options, but what we do will depend on what my laboratory's... benefactors... authorise."

John slipped his hand into Sherlock's and held his fingers firmly between his own fingertips and thumb.

"One," Irene explained, "the riskiest course of action, would be surgical removal. The procedure is even more invasive than what we've done so far. None of the subjects before him have survived a removal attempt. I speak from experience when I say there are many ways it could go wrong."

John gave Sherlock's fingers a single squeeze.

"Two, we leave the embryo alone and keep the patient restrained and under constant surveillance. He won't leave this room. He'll have a set of permanent electrodes and sensory feedback equipment integrated into his brain, through which we gather data on the creature until it follows the pattern of the others and destroys his brain. Eventually it will kill him and itself. This entire facility would be on lockdown until that happens."

Two squeezes from John's hand.

"Our final option," Irene said, "is the one you'll like the least, but it's also most likely what the lab's overseers will command. We may be ordered to perform specific experiments on the subject. You should prepare yourself to do whatever they call for. It could be anything from experimental hypnosis to provoking the creature into prematurely burrowing so we can chart the destruction. Or it might be something as routine as a full frontal lobotomy."

Three squeezes.

"I doubt they'll let us close him up and walk away," Irene finished.

John nodded. Then he looked down at Sherlock questioningly.

Sherlock squeezed John's fingers three distinct times.

John cleared his throat and addressed Irene. "If you don't mind, I think it would be a good idea to remove the electrodes from the patient before we call your superiors."

"Be my guest, Dr. Watson." Irene stepped out of his way. Sherlock caught a glimpse of her white coat.

Splaying his fingers over Sherlock's forehead to brace him, John used one hand to ease both electroprobes, one after the other, free of Sherlock's messy, pink brain. The rods went on the instrument tray, dripping just a bit of biological goo. Sherlock stared up at the reflection of his brain cells coating the medical tools.

John turned to Mary. "Nurse, Dr. Adler and I are stepping out for a minute. Alert us if the patient's condition changes. I'll be back as soon as I can."

While the two surgeons were outside debating, Mary filled a glass at the sink and allowed Sherlock to sip his fill of water through a straw.

As she took the glass back to the sink, she remarked to Sherlock, "If they keep you like this much longer, I'll have to begin irrigating your brain, too. Cerebral tissue dies quickly once it dries out."

Sherlock bit his lip.

"Of course," Mary mused offhand, "they might decide to just hook you up to the ECT and throw the switch. There's not much I can do for you if they fry your brains."

Sherlock groaned.

Soon the doctors re-entered, each carrying a small case. Irene set hers down in a clear spot on the instrument tray.

John opened his and held it for Mary to see. Sherlock could see it in the mirror.

John indicated the complex miniature maze of circuitry nestled in the felt lining. "So this is the equipment Dr. Adler's team has given us." He turned to Irene and asked grimly, "What do they intend us to do with it?"

Irene's voice was cool and collected. "I'm going to implant this microchip into the subject's brain. If everything goes correctly, it will enable us to alter his brainwaves and also to send back wireless data from his brain back to the team at my lab."

John frowned bemusedly at the item in his hands. "But what are we going to achieve by interrupting his own brainwave patterns?"

"The possibilities for stimulation to the alien embryo are limited with standard hospital technology. Using the impulses of the subject's brain is far more subtle and controllable than sending only approximately predictable electrical currents through his skull. With the microchip installed, we will have sectioned control over his entire brain. Control of his entire nervous system will require a separate procedure, which only my lab is equipped to handle."

"Hang on a minute," John hissed. "Complete, unrestricted brain control? That's not right! That's enslavement!"

"He's already enslaved to the creature," Irene countered. "Without intervention, he's no more than a host to the ticking time bomb embedded in his brain."

"No. I won't allow it. Regardless of the situation, this sort of experimentation isn't something I can allow you to perform on one of my patients."

Irene took the case from him and sneered, "You don't have to allow it. He's not your patient anymore. This subject became property of my laboratory the second you contacted me. If you still want to contest that, you can call back my superiors and take it up with them."

John huffed frustratedly, knowing the argument was lost. "...Fine," he ceded. 

"Glad to have you on board," Irene's undertone was gloating over the victory.

"Let's get it over with," John said sourly. He followed her back to their positions around Sherlock's head, where they quickly finessed the surgical site so the procedure could begin.

With tweezers and a precision pick, Irene planted the wire barbs angling off the microchip into the soft, yielding organ spilling from the breach in Sherlock's head. After the final one was in place, she gave the apparatus a gentle tug with the tweezers. It was firmly embedded.

John motioned to Mary. "Nurse, could you please hand me the surface electrodes? All of them."

Mary reached over Sherlock with three wires. John prepared the end of each one, adhering the circular white sensors directly to the surface of Sherlock's exposed brain.

Mary keyed them in on the monitor. "Secondary cerebral telemetry active and recording." 

Irene took hold of the needle electrodes, one in each hand, gripping them safely by the handles. 

"Redirect power into the electroprobes, steady charge. I want the voltage at ten times the previous dose," she told Mary.

Mary hesitated, then sighed and entered the command into the unit. "Current is ready to discharge, doctor."

"What are you doing?" John demanded.

Irene poised the electrodes over Sherlock. She used one to gesture at the chip. "This implant won't activate until I send a charge through it. When I do, it will integrate with his system and tap into his neural impulses."

John protested, "But the voltage... You'll overload his brain with a shock that strong!"

"Let me do my job, doctor," Irene snapped. "The chip will absorb most of the energy activating itself. The risk of brain damage is smaller than it seems, I assure you."

"Keep an eye on him," John instructed Mary all the same. Dutifully, she continued to keep tabs on Sherlock's readouts.

The probes inched closer to Sherlock's head until Irene touched one to each end of his microchip, fitting the tips neatly into a pair of receptor ports. The loud zap of the electricity coursing through him ricocheted in his head as he jerked under the neurosurgeon's treatment. Irene pulled back the probes and set them down.

Mary caught John's eye, relaying, "Minimal output immediately surrounding the probe."

Irene looked smug.

"Dr. Adler was right," Mary concluded. "Nothing indicates tissue trauma beyond the physical attachment points."

"What about the alien?" John pressed.

Mary double-checked her screen. "Same as before. It hasn't reacted at all to the chip activation."

Irene picked up the remaining tech case from the tray. "The chip is only a passive receptor on its own," she revealed. "It's already sending his brainwaves to the lab's computer system as it records them, but to take control of the chip's non-passive functions I need to fit our subject with the internal bioprobe. It's the transmitter that completes the feedback loop between his brain and belly."

John raised an eyebrow at her.

"I take it this bioprobe will be replacing the one I already inserted into the patient?"

"It will." 

Irene stepped back and waited while John gingerly removed the little probe from its snug encapsulation in Sherlock's navel before she opened the case and prepared for the next step. 

The transmitter tip was more than twice the length of the probe John had just extracted. It gleamed menacingly under the light. Irene found a pair of wires on the instrument cart and used them to connect the receptor ports in the brain chip to a matching set of ports in the top of the bioprobe. To keep them out of her way, she ran each wire through one of the hooks hanging above Sherlock where the surgical sheet had been earlier.

John accepted two more surface electrodes from Mary and applied them to Sherlock's temples. Sherlock's head was a mess of wires surrounding the site of his vivisection.

Cautiously, Irene pressed the slim transmitter to the barely visible entry hole left inside Sherlock's navel from the first probe. He tried his best not to squirm as she worked on him.

With a sudden, easy motion, it sank in halfway. Sherlock gasped and twitched, his eyes wide. He felt Irene force it harder, and watched it disappear into himself all the way to the knob at the top. The pair of wires quivered over his belly. 

The circuit was complete. The transmitter would shoot signals into Sherlock's belly brain, send them up his spine until they reached his brain and exited through the control chip, where the wires would catch the energy and channel it back down. The impulses would travel back to his umbilical probe for the next cycle of artificial stimulation.

 

"Initiating mind control sequence."

Irene grasped the knob of the umbilical transmitter.

"Transmitting brainwave override sequence now."

She twisted it inside him.

Sherlock's nerves ignited with white-hot pleasure. He writhed on the table, the leather straps shaking, feeling the impulses sent into his bellybutton shoot up his spine and into his brain. His mind blanked out, overridden as the neurosurgeon anticipated. His body roiled as it coursed through him.

Mind-controlled, brain-dead, electrocuted, obliterated. The implant and the alien took him over.

His mind lost, his brain fried, Sherlock lost consciousness.

Delicately, Irene peered beneath the sodden sheet between Sherlock's legs. She smiled and held it up just enough that John could take a peek.

She winked and said, "I'd say the operation was a success. Shall we move him to Recovery?"

John bit down on a wide grin when he saw how thoroughly Sherlock had spent himself. 

"Absolutely," he whispered.


	2. Repetition for Verification of Results

Sherlock did not expect the scene to continue when he woke. His bleary eyes shot wide open when he saw John standing over him in a white coat and holding a clipboard.

John's smile was as bright as the sun streaming in between the window blinds. Sherlock glanced around and figured he must have been asleep for a long while. They'd moved him to a completely different room, one that looked like an average hospital ward, just smaller. His was the only bed.

"Good morning, Mr. Holmes," John chirped with his more pedestrian bedside manner.

Sherlock took a deep breath, then stilled in shock. He looked down at the bed. 

The blanket covered him only up to the hips, the reason being he was still... implanted. The experimental medical instrument Irene had inserted into him was still embedded in his navel.

Sherlock followed the wires with his eyes. They went up past his field of vision, to the top of his head. There was a ceiling mirror in this room, but it was tilted such that Sherlock could only see himself from the shoulders down. 

The rest of what he could see was accurately stereotypical, all the way down to the plastic identification bracelet on his wrist. Someone had, it felt, cleaned him up while he was out, but he was still nude beneath the blanket.

John quickly leaned over him and laid a calming hand on his shoulder when Sherlock flushed and began to breathe heavier. John fussed over him, brushing the hair back from Sherlock's brow.

He said, "You're all right now. Dr. Adler was able to subdue the parasite and remove it. She left the probes in for observation, but you've recovered enough that they can be removed now. I'm going to call the nurse in to get you ready, and then I'll see you in the operating room, yeah?"

Sherlock swallowed roughly. He tried to nod, not trusting his voice. but it felt like he had something heavy attached to his head. 

"Alright," Sherlock croaked.

John stared at him for a moment, reluctant to leave, and finally said, "Y'know, I think I'll just take your vitals first. I'll need to check them later, before we start the procedure, but let me just see how you're doing right now."

Sherlock was completely still for him while he checked around with the stethoscope, being careful not to disturb the EKG leads or the wires trailing off the end of the probe. 

He went through the rest of the routine with a gentle touch. He fished a thermometer out of the bedside cabinet, and Sherlock let him tuck it under his tongue. Sherlock held it without complaint while John palpated his abdomen, being extra gentle below Sherlock's navel.

Sherlock felt the metal inside him move under John's fingers. He went rigid and gasped around the thermometer.

"Easy," John tutted. 

He gave Sherlock's upper abdomen a pat and reached for the blood pressure cuff on the wall. Sherlock knew better than to try to sit up for it. John gave him an approving smile as he lifted Sherlock's arm into the cuff for him. By the time he was done taking Sherlock's blood pressure reading, the thermometer beeped.

"Very good," John muttered, writing down the numbers on Sherlock's chart.

He checked Sherlock's pupils with the pen light, examined his ears with an otoscope, and took the time to check Sherlock's pulse at both the wrist and throat.

John could tell by the look in Sherlock's eyes that he was still floating in a shred of post-orgasmic haze from earlier. It was wonderful to see.

"I'll send the nurse in for you," he repeated, trying not to smile too hard.

He left to find Mary, shutting the door quietly behind him.

It wasn't long before she entered, in scrubs and a mask. She nodded to him but made no conversation, setting straight to work elevating the top of the bed and unhitching the brakes from its wheels. She pulled up a tray over Sherlock's legs, locked it in place, and moved the small, slow-beeping EKG console to it.

She pushed Sherlock out into a wide hall that he hadn't seen before since the first two rooms were right next to each other. The bland, institutional nature of the passageway made him feel as though he really was being wheeled to surgery. He tensed, excited and just a hint scared.

Mary smirked behind her mask, watching his keen eyes dance over the walls as they passed by.

She got him through the double doors at the end of the hall, and Sherlock's eyes lit up at seeing John again. John took hold of the one of the rails on the bed and helped Mary swing it into place right in the same spot where the padded table had first been. Sherlock gazed around and found everything else as it was before.

John turned on the surgical lamp while Mary pulled the rails down from the bed and set the EKG with the rest of the machinery on the crash cart. 

Sherlock half-listened to the rushing around as they prepared things. He couldn't believe he slept deep enough for them to do what they had, but up in the mirror he saw a glass hemisphere anchored to his head, encasing what looked like an even larger expanse of naked brain than before. He appeared to be missing nearly half his skull.

What was more, through a network of tiny holes in the dome protruded a plethora of needle probes, their individual wires trailing out in the direction of the crash cart - Mary had just finished plugging them into something there - feeding into his brain like spooky alien tendrils.

The sound of the monitor screen on the crash cart powering up broke his attention from the mirror. Mary had already retrieved a cap and gloves and was tying on her surgical apron. In the corner by the sink, John was suiting up too.

Sherlock squirmed his hips when he heard John purposely snap his gloves.

Both of them soon had Sherlock bound to the bed on either side with the padded wrist and ankle cuffs. Mary lowered the bed so Sherlock was lying flat, and secured his head with a long strap that went across the entire width of the bed. It sat tightly across his forehead, just under the edge of the glass dome, so he couldn't lift his head at all. Sherlock heard the buckle cinch shut to his right.

John stepped over to his side. 

"I'm going to take your vitals one last time, and then... we're going to complete your brain surgery." John gave him another warm smile behind his mask, a playful light dancing in his eyes. Though he wanted to appear suitably serious, the doctor exuded light-hearted confidence now that he knew how much Sherlock was enjoying himself.

John examined him again, Mary using the time to double-check the rest of the room was in order and all the necessary tools within reach at the head of the bed. 

A thrill went through Sherlock as John took position behind his head. His hands clenched in the cuffs. Outwardly, the rest of him was still. 

John could feel the energy, though. Sherlock was tranquil, giddy, nervous, and vibrating with anticipation all at once, and all that on top of a steadily buzzing sense of arousal. The atmosphere of the scene was enough to keep Sherlock's overactive mind engaged at this point, reinforced by the memory of the first experience.

Sherlock watched with rapt attention in the mirror. 

Before beginning, John asked Mary to hook Sherlock up to another set of sensors in case of unwanted feedback from the probe in his belly. She attached a second set identical to the EKG leads to Sherlock's belly, including one sensor below his navel, right where John had touched the probe through his skin.

The needle electrodes slid out of his head one by one, then John was unhinging the series of clasps that fastened the glass hemisphere, the replacement for Sherlock's missing flaps of parietal bone, from the steel anchor ring around the severed edges of Sherlock's skull. A seam in the glass opened, freeing the two wires Irene left attached to the microchip. Mary reached over to rest the wires in the overhead hooks as they had been during the first operation.

John touched his gloved fingers tenderly to various locations, testing the texture of Sherlock's brain. 

Sherlock saw it shine a little under the lamp and wondered if it was coated in his own cerebral fluid secretions or if they had found it necessary to apply an artificial irrigation liquid to prevent his brain tissue from withering out inside the dome. 

"No exposure damage," John observed aloud.

Sherlock shifted his hips. Curiosity piquing in the current moment's relatively slow pace, he wondered what might happen if John were to plunge one of his fingers deep into Sherlock's brain. He wondered how it would look, how it might feel to have part of his mind destroyed so viscerally.

He shivered and refocused.

John picked up tweezers and a pair of fine gauge forceps, using them to first disconnect the wires from the chip.

Mary took the loose ends and fitted them into a small device with a single wire running out the other side, which she plugged into the diagnostic machines. She watched the monitors for a minute to check how Sherlock's body was reacting to the disconnect.

She told the doctor, "The transmitter programming loop has shut down. The chip has locked into its passive state."

"What's the transmitter doing now? Anything?"

"Not much. It's losing power. It's trying to impose a delta wave pattern, but the impulses are too weak to reach the brain. The abdominal nerve centre is absorbing everything."

"Hm," John nodded. "Let it run itself dry, then. I'll get to it soon, after we close him up."

He started to work around the edges of the chip in Sherlock's brain. It was a long and delicate process. Halfway through, John stopped. He hadn't made much progress for all the tinkering around.

"The chip is embedded deeper than it looks," he sighed, shaking his head at it. "Nurse, the ultrasound sensor?"

She reached over Sherlock and pressed a round, flat-ended wand to his head just below the restraint strap.

Mary's brow furrowed when she looked back to the monitor. "It looks like the chip injected an anchoring spike at some point. It's penetrated two centimetres below the implant site."

John huffed, thinking, then decided, "I'm going to have to remove part of the right parencephalon."

Mary retracted the ultrasound wand.

"Doctor, are you sure?" she asked, worried.

"Positive," he said. "I don't want any part of this chip left stuck in the patient. Who knows what sort of access Adler's scientists might be able to get if he still has their technology inside him."

He rearranged a few items on the instrument tray, choosing what he would need. 

"The whole thing comes out now," John swore.

He steadied one hand on Sherlock's skull. With the other, he took a scalpel and brought it into position.

"Making the first incision. Watch his vitals."

John guided the blade slowly around the chip, cutting carefully into the brain matter itself.

Sherlock was so enthralled he had stopped trying to discern what the squishy, organic-looking prop was made of. He would ask later, though he already strongly suspected industrial gelatine, possibly combined somehow with latex.

John had to switch to a longer instrument, a sharp, curved pick on a crosshatched handle. He slid it into the incisions, angling it to bore around the narrow spike under the chip.

With forceps and a long-handled scoop, John extracted the entire severed chunk of brain. He transferred it carefully to a waiting metal pan beside the instruments on the tray.

Sherlock could make out part of the shadowy hole in his right hemisphere. His breath caught when John ran a finger around the hole.

"Look at that," John said thoughtfully. He hummed to himself. "... If Dr. Adler and her goons had their way, he'd be facing a lot more than a partial lobotomy."

Sherlock winced, feeling an ache in his bellybutton; the probe had jostled a little with his heavy breathing.

He was given a rest from the action then, Mary handing John one end of a sheet that they replaced on the overhead hooks, partitioning the workspace so Sherlock was unable to watch them close up his head. He felt most of it, but couldn't make out very much of what they were specifically doing. The props and the restraint strap came off, he could tell that much. His breathing evened out by the time they were done and pulled the sheet back down. He looked up.

Sherlock's head looked as though it had never been cut into or split open in the first place. But then Sherlock peered harder and spotted a faint outline disappearing into his hairline, marks that from this distance looked just enough like...

Stitches.

Evidence to remind him that they had cracked him open and worked on him, experimented on him like Frankenstein's monster.

John and Mary were both glued to the monitor display now, having a hushed debate. John had lowered his mask and discarded the surgical apron. Sherlock heard every word clearly. They were worried that the probe would try to send out one last disruptive burst when they removed it, a burst that could wipe out Sherlock's higher brain functions without the chip there to convert the signals.

They finally concluded that there was slightly less risk in trying to disable the probe with a similar burst sent in the opposite direction. The hope was to create feedback that would overload the probe. If they were lucky, all of the excess energy would be expended frying the probe and Sherlock wouldn't permanently lose any brain function.

The cart with the electroshock therapy device was wheeled to the side of the bed.

 

John powered up the machine and set the flat-ended, metal-capped electrode wands on either side of Sherlock's head, in preparation. He would have to pick them up and hold them in place to apply the shock. The setting displays on the front of the device glowed threateningly.

"Sherlock," John told him, "You're going to be receiving ECT now. Electroconvulsive therapy. I'm going to send an electric current into your brain, but it will travel down the nerves of your spine and into your belly brain. Dr. Adler's probe is putting your entire nervous system in danger, and we must do this to deactivate it. Do you understand?"

"... Yes, doctor," Sherlock moaned.

"Right. Now look up at the ceiling and hold still."

Sherlock obeyed.

John set the dials and switches on the ECT device and picked up the probes again.

Mary's eyes flicked between what John was doing and the readouts from the sensors on Sherlock's chest and belly. 

John touched the probes together, then brought them down to either side of Sherlock's head. He pressed them to Sherlock's temples. Nothing happened for the first couple of seconds.

"Administering shock."

_ZzzZZT!_

Sherlock shuddered and thrashed uncontrollably until the shock was over. He half-heard Mary say something about a successful electrocution, something about the probe. Sherlock panted and watched John power down the ECT unit.

The next Sherlock knew, both of them were standing over him with their hands on his belly. 

Time was of the essence. Mary held the ultrasound to his skin while John grasped the knob of the bioprobe and pulled. He drew it slowly out of Sherlock, who spasmed and strained against the cuffs in earnest.

Shortly before it came free, a shout escaped him and he fell limp.

Mary ripped open an antiseptic pad and forced it into Sherlock's navel, which genuinely hurt. It stung. She held it for a good minute or two, applying pressure. Meanwhile, John went about shutting off the lamp and cleaning up. 

Sherlock glimpsed a spot of blood when Mary threw out the pad. She opened another and wiped inside Sherlock's navel to clean it out, then dried him with a cotton swab. 

It would take the better part of a week, maybe a little longer, but Sherlock would heal.

John strode up and merrily checked beneath the cloth to assess Sherlock's privates. 

He gave Sherlock a proud grin, which grew wider when Sherlock blushed.

Mary tried to hide her smile. 

"I'll leave you two alone," she whispered conspiratorially.

Sherlock craned his neck and watched her go. As the door swung shut, he blurted, "I presume Irene promised her something in exchange for her help."

It was John's turn to blush. "Oh..." He cleared his throat. "I hadn't thought of that. Though if you're thinking of spying or interrupting, I'm telling you right now I won't allow it. Irene's been nice to us."

Sherlock wrinkled his nose "Spying? On girls? You do remember who you're talking to?"

John took Sherlock's cuffed hand in his and said fondly, "That's right; you're still in the 'girls have cooties' phase."

"Never growing out of it," Sherlock promised. Along that line, he added, "I could use a nap."

John kissed Sherlock's forehead tenderly. "I'm sure. I'll bring you back to the recovery room in a minute. It's a little more cheerful in there, and I can sit with you. Think you can wait for a shower until we get home?"

"Mmhm," Sherlock hummed.

"Oh, and..." John leaned in close and informed him, "We've got the whole thing on tape for you to look at whenever you want."

A flash of panic and surprise showed in Sherlock's eyes before he realised what John meant. He had a wank tape now. Irene couldn't do too much with it in terms of blackmail - not that Sherlock had forgotten her capabilities the day they'd decided to involve her. He was pleased that the risk had paid off.

Sherlock beamed up at John and moaned a happy moan. "Thank you."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The End. 
> 
> Moral of the story: if you have a med-surg textbook in your house, don't let your kids read it if you don't want them writing fic like this when they're older. I'm dead serious.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Paediatric Ward](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7295221) by [Hobbitrocious](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hobbitrocious/pseuds/Hobbitrocious)




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